


Wordpicture: General George Hammond

by Deannie



Series: Wordpictures [22]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-06
Updated: 2003-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he went home to his daughter and his granddaughters and he wondered why he didn't just stay right there, safe in his easy chair, pretending that huge metal ring had never been found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordpicture: General George Hammond

There were days--hell, there were _weeks_ \--when he wondered why he stayed.  


Twenty-four hour check-ins that he began waiting for the moment the gate closed behind his teams, alerts and crises that seemed a daily routine, aliens he'd never even dreamed of in the years before he dropped down into the bowels of a mountain that opened into space...  


His people got hurt. Killed. He'd lost so many since this damn thing started, and nearly lost so many more. Some, he worried he'd lose simply to the stress of doing the work they did. He could see in their eyes sometimes, that hair's breadth from insanity that could be crossed so easily...  


Sometimes he went home to his daughter and his granddaughters and he wondered why he didn't just stay right there, safe in his easy chair, pretending that huge metal ring had never been found.  


And then there were days when _his_ people had made a difference--a real one, for all the world would never know about it. Days when his men and women returned safely, in triumph, against all odds and because of their own brilliant ingenuity.  


And there were days when the scientists, _his_ scientists, discovered something new and wonderful--hell, it didn't matter if it had _any_ military applications as far as he was concerned, regardless of what the Pentagon and the damned NID had to say. Alien artifacts that lit up the faces of people like Major Carter, ancient inscriptions that had his archeologists champing at the bit to get out there into the unknown.  


Hell, maybe _that_ was why he stayed. His people--and by extension, he himself--saw things every day that all other people on Earth couldn't even begin to imagine. And they launched themselves into the search for those wonders with an energy and a curiosity that he found he still had. Even at his age. All right, maybe the flesh was weak, but his spirit was sure as hell willing.  


So, retirement? It could wait. There was a universe out there to be explored.  


And he was damned if anyone else's people were going to do the job.

* * *  
The End


End file.
